Beside her infant one had paused: his brow
With orange blossom buds and roses crowned;
His sunny ringlets o'er his neck flowed low,
By unconfining garlands lightly bound;
In grace pre-eminent surpassing all,
He riveted her gaze with loving thrall.

He stooped, he touched its pillow, when between
That spirit and her child was seen to rise
Another form of sterner, prouder mien,
More awful beauty beaming forth in eyes
From whose regard, with cold blood-curdling thrill,
Her freezing soul shrunk shuddering, cowed and chill.
No flowers bedecked the garland that was set
Around that brow austere in solemn calm ;
Amid its thickly-clustered locks of jet
The sorrowing cypress and the martyr palm,
Darkening a laurel wreath with deeper shade,
His majesty-denoting symbol made.

To him the brighter spirit yielded place,
In silence rising as the other bent,
And, lifting up the child in his embrace,
A moment on it gazed with eyes intent,
Then gently near enfolded to his breast,
One long, close kiss upon its lips impressed.
And at the touch the infant's soul awoke;
Its eyes that gaze encountered; at the sight
From out its lips no cry of terror broke,
No gesture of alarm denoted fright;
As of a friend whose secrets it partook,
It met that fixed regard with fearless look.

In slumber had her soul from earth been freed
For insight on a world here hid from view?
Did what she there had seen forebode indeed
Some fate whereof as yet she nothing knew?
Or was it but a vision of the brain,
Confounding fancy with delusions vain ?
Before her in his cradle lay her child,
Tranquilly sleeping in the shaded light;
And as she looked upon his face she smiled
To think that e'er conjecture could unite
Such incoherent images to seem

Aught to the eye of reason but a dream."

In "THE BLOSSOM," which is the title of the opening part of the Poem proper, the child has disappeared, and the youth commences his tutelage under the caprices of a lover's experiences, which are personified by Mr. Sandes as those adverse spirits who have, as we have seen, set their seals upon him in his infancy. For their sway his young heart is prepared only too well by its own loveward tendencies. We are told that

"In childhood his thoughts, outrunning their years,
Through wayward emotions and purposeless tears,
Toward youth's adolescence converging, began
To trace out the character marking the man.

As manhood drew nigh, and the boy awoke
To learn a new language within him that spoke,
A tumult of objectless sentiment reigned

In the nature by passion's awakening pained."

And thus he loved :

"And then on his vacant devotion's throne
Installing a sovereign by fantasy shown,

He levied from ocean, from mountain, from grove,
Fit tribute to offer idealized love,

He worshipped the beauty that crowned its brow,
He breathed to its deadness a living vow;
And, colouring fancy to passion's red flow,
He plighted his truth to an image of snow.

But vainly with fervour his vows were paid;
A life-lacking idol no answer made;

His ardour's intensity pined for return,

From a heart in its iciness powerless to burn."

This, however, could not last long; and at length his heart, fretted and starved by the thanklessness of a love that was built but upon fancy and lacked a living object, lighted upon one "whom in childhood he knew" :

"As thus, through conjecture, his longings sought
To fathom the mystery in him wrought,

There passed, and repassed, and stood still in his view
The figure of one whom in childhood he knew.

When last he beheld her, it was while she

From girlhood was growing to woman's degree,

When beauty's new pride sparkled out in her eye,
And the spring-flood of triumphing spirit swelled high.

He felt of her keen-witted words afraid,

Her laughter his looks more embarrassed made,
And, blushing with anger to find himself fooled,

He inveighed against fashions where girls were so schooled.

He chose to consider what graced her best,

Youth's free-hearted gaiety freely expressed,
As wholly unseemly; the weapons of wit

He denounced as for woman's light handling unfit.

He spoke of frivolity, wondered much
How any were found to be pleased with such,
Vowing none of her folly but fools could approve ;
In blindness of wisdom he moving toward love.

They met in the lapse of years again,

And, whether his judgment was grown less vain,
Or she more the woman, he seemed to behold

The face, not the faults, he remembered of old."

This, we conceive, will be recognised as a reflexion of what all of us have felt who have loved, a boyish love. Sneer on, any who

wish-we envy you not who can afford to do so-love is the life of life (this life, be it with reverence said), and must have its youth which passeth away, that the mature love may stand where it had been, and make a man indeed a man, not a child, by its influence-and so,

"His ideal, his icy love,

Whom he prized all womankind above,

Slipped quietly out of his heart-she was flown-
And a true living woman sat there on her throne."

We incline to think that the description of the growth and ultimate supplanting of the ideal love in the breast of this youth, is a specimen of beauty with very little adornment about it. Its simplicity sits well upon the early part of the history, where we find it. Mr. Sandes has, with a refined taste left it—simplex munditiis—rightly judging that it could dispense with the perfectly legitimate assistance of striking simile and vivid imagery, both of which, as will be presently apparent, he has at his command, but he "bides his time." In Part II. of "THE BLOSSOM" the other, the better half of the perfect flower, is introduced to us. A fair young maiden, innocent of love, builds her "castles in the air" for an ideal other; but even as we have heard that "talking of love is making love," so she finds her fond imaginings unconsciously applied to herself

"She starts from her dream in surprise to find,
While the tale of another was filling her mind,

That her hand had unconsciously gathered the flower,
And the pale yellow rose-leaves lie round in a shower."

She too, then, is proved liable to that vague stir in the heart, that yearning-what shall we call it ?-which seems to be a very element in our humanity. The way in which this is managed is an evidence that Mr. Sandes has that delicacy of mind which poetry should never dispense with

"Fond dreamer, if this should be she whom thou
Alone in the watch-tower art worshipping now,

Full long hast thou lingered-if time be yet,
Haste, seek her out, fly ere to-morrow's sun set."

In "The Blossom," Part III., the ministerings of the tutelary spirit of True Love are introduced in the following lines :

"The Spirit in heaven ordained a bove

To bless the unbroken fulfilment of love,

Was winging his way through the noontide air,

Keeping guard o'er the beings who lived in his care.”

Mr. Sandes goes on to tells us, in some most pleasing verses, who this spirit passes over happy lovers with a smile and a blessing,

but when he comes upon our two hearts whose happiness is on its trial

"Down stooping, the Spirit descended near,
Till the words of the speaker arose to his ear,

And he knew by their accent the moment had come
Whose issue all fortune ensuing must sum."

He listens to the breathing of that "old, old story," never to be old unto death, his own very essence; he listened and heard it blighted—then

"From the lips of the Spirit there burst a moan,
As, veiling his eyes at that answering tone,
Uprose he, and, slowly averting his head,

For ever from those two his presence was fled."

We really must get on more rapidly; but we cannot forbear quoting the following lines, which are, perhaps, the gem of this Part, and follow upon a train of conjecture having regard to the influence of disappointment on this true lover's mind :

"But still, when the midnight hour is past,

And the heart's casket opens through day locked fast,
When tears that the waking eye knows not to weep,
Gather under the lids in the dreamings of sleep.

A soft, sweet, young smile slowly steals o'er his face,
And his arms seek some phantom they strive to embrace,
And in accents whose tone sorrow's elegy seems

Low he murmurs a name never breath'd but in dreams."

The self-communings of this disappointed heart give Mr. Sandes scope for the display of his rare gifts of finding forms of speech which express some of the most subtle phenomena of a brooding mind as tangibly to our understanding, as though he were dealing with the simple material subjects on which we daily exchange our experiences. If he over-taxes this gift occasionally, and becomes at all involved, it will require very little indulgence on our part to pass such instances, in the words of the old Roman writer

"Si non erâsset, fecerit ille minus."

In this, the main part of the poem, the lover speaks in the first person, and chooses as his idol henceforth, Liberty

"Let pride of birth or pride of wealth delight
The fool that glories in a gilded name;
With weary finger let Ambition write
On Honour's tablet vain appeals to Fame.
In idleness conceived, in folly nursed,

Let Love feed fires to parch a fevered heart,
Till disenchantment to its frenzied thirst

The healing draught of bitter truth impart.

More dear than cherished love's most fond illusion,

Source of more pride than birthright's sense e'er gave,
Of riches more than wealth's untold profusion
Heaps on the lord who lives his treasure's slave-

From ties of care, from custom's fetters free,

Unshackled liberty be thou to me!"

Sickened by the fallacy of the hopes which he had cherished prays for an insight into what is

"O Thou who framest failure and success,

Grant unto me such gift of clear-eyed vision,
Unto each motive of my action grant

Such certainty, that after-life's contrition,

Mourn not a hollow fraud's too late-found want."

And thus is he answered, thus rebuked

"Beside my pillow, at the morning hour
When lighter darkness over earth is cast,
And instant dreams intensify in power,
A bright-eyed, haggard, hectic stripling passed;
The mystery that I alone have probed,
Of truth the fathomed soul, behold,' he cried,
And, rending off the vest wherein was robed
His wasted form, he tore from out his side
A lacerated heart, and held to view
Each naked ligament, each quivering nerve,
Inviting me to mark their livid hue,

And trace the tortured fibre's writhing curve;
Till stole a breeze of daylight o'er my bed,
And, shuddering at its breath, the phantom fled.

To draw from out the living wells of life
A single drop of Nature's pulsing flood,
By microscopic skill to prove it rife,
With foul abomination's monstrous brood;
To analyze a flawless diamond gem,

And preach to him who deems it dear- Be wise:
Thy jewel's value learnedly contemn,-
A chemic charcoal compound cease to prize;'
To gather from the world of beauty's prism
Each coloured beam with rainbow glories bright,
And bid experience, blending, drop the chrism,
Anointing dying tints to hueless white:

Be such thy lore, thou science of the heart!
For ever from its creed I stand apart.

I stand upon a precipice's brink,

And see each flower wherewith my fancy toyed,
Ungarlanded, in slow succession sink,

With wasted bloom to flutter down the void.
With placid smiles, with feigned approving ear,
By anguish evermore still inly gnawed,
From wisdom-weighted reverend lips I hear
Congratulation's accent sharply laud

One disenchantment more, one hope the less,
One item added to deception's sum,
One newer cause for doubting in redress
Of want's outcrying claims as yet to come
From Time, uprooting all ere gathered, save
The mourning violet plucked on pleasure's grave.